News Categories

Books we recommend

Ontario ruling: allow gender change without surgery

In what a London lawyer is calling a “game-changing decision,” the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has struck down a rule that required trans people to undergo “transsexual surgery” in order to change the sex category on their birth certificates.

Released April 11, the 95-page decision follows a challenge by one trans woman who complained she was discriminated against because she could not change her legal documents unless she had surgery.

The tribunal found that the Vital Statistics Act requirement of “transsexual surgery” prior to changing the sex designation on a birth certificate discriminates against trans people, she says. The provincial government has been ordered to remove this stipulation.

Whether this means anything for the situation in Manitoba remains to be seen, though one person involved in the Ontario case says

[this] precedent-setting decision could force changes to legislation in other provinces and territories